I'm creating 49 figures in Matlab, they are all created automatically one after the other. I want them to also automatically be saved as .tif or .jpg images with names corresponding to their figure number.
Can I do it? And if so,how?

To answer your second question, have a look at avifile(). However, I've had better luck saving frames individually (compression quality issues if I recall correctly).

To save individual frames, you can use imwrite() or print() with a -dpng or similar option. From there, use sprintf() to generate a filename with your frame number in it, and you've got most of what you need. You'll need some sort of movie editor program (VideoMach, etc.) to turn those frames into a movie if you don't use Matlab's avifile(), however.